LOOK
WHEN YOU
The Falcon Mummy
When you look at this 3,000 year old falcon mummy you see forgotten royalty.
The falcon was once a symbol of great power and represented several gods in ancient Egypt. Today the falcon has lost much of its legacy. As you admire this falcon mummy, held by the Orma J. Smith Museum you see damaged and old linen cloth barely covering the once powerful falcon. Looking into the mummy’s symbolic history, the physical characteristics, and culture that help make up the image of the falcon, we are able to glimpse the falcon as a being almost worthy of worship, as the ancient Egyptians saw it.
This mummy was made near the end of the 20th Dynasty. This dynasty was the 3rd Dynasty of the New Kingdom and includes The Pharaohs included Setekht, and Ramses III through Ramses XI. It was very common for animals to be mummified. There are millions of animal mummies in museums and cemeteries across Egypt today. Click the button below for a video on how animal mummies were made.
The most common thing that the falcon symbolized was the god Horus. Horus was one of the most prominent, most worshiped, and most respected gods in Egypt. He is the son of the gods Isis and Osiris. In Egyptian mythology, he defeats the infamous and terrible god Set. Horus was the god of the morning sun and of the sky, and he was a guardian for all Egypt. He was usually depicted as having the body of a man and the head of a falcon. The Egyptians believed that their pharaohs were direct descendants of Horus, and thus were meant to rule on the Earth. It was the pharaoh’s duty to watch over and protect Egypt as Horus had done first. The falcon could also be seen as a symbol of the sun god Ra.
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Read Ethan's full research paper here